SPIG (Student Peer Interactive Grading) wins Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon’s 2024 Congressional App Challenge in Pennsylvania’s Fifth District

When asked what inspired the creation of SPIG, the students said, “Last year, in our AP Computer Science class, we used the student-peer interactive grading (SPIG) method nearly every week to help us practice free-response questions. This peer-grading format offered clear educational benefits, as by helping grade others’ submissions and debating the grades in groups we gained a greater understanding of the content itself. However, we noticed that inefficiencies bogged down this grading format. Students and teachers alike were frustrated with the manual handling of peer reviews because they were often tedious, paper-heavy, and confusing to manage. Knowing that there was a better way to streamline this process, we searched for potential software we could use to automate it alongside our teacher Mr. Baber, but could not find any that allowed for the real-time group grading and three-way analytical feedback necessary for SPIG’s proper implementation. Given this and our previous coding experiences, he noted that we could digitally automate the process by developing our own SPIG web application, making the student-peer grading process more intuitive, secure, and efficient for everybody involved. This suggestion greatly interested us and, with his support, we began building the SPIG web application from the ground up, focusing on making the grading process simpler, faster, and more interactive. 

While the journey wasn’t without its challenges—particularly when trying to route data from Elixer to Python and vice versa via the Erland Ports system—we remained committed to solving this problem. What began as a classroom frustration has evolved into a solution we’re excited to share, as we believe that our app has the potential to enhance learning environments for both teachers and students. We were lucky enough to be able to present SPIG at the 2024 National AP Conference in Las Vegas, where it won acclaim from multiple sources, including the national head reader for AP Computer Science. This year, it is being tested in schools across the country, where we are hoping to gain insight into how it can be further improved and adapted to student and school-wide educational needs. Although still relatively small, this success has only further inspired us to continue pursuing this project.”